diy: christmas book advent calendar

i have a serious addiction to advent calendars. christmas is my very favorite holiday and my birthday is christmas eve, so it is a happy season for me. more than that, christmas is a time where everyone is happy and focused on all the good things in life. people seem nicer in general and appreciative of life and loving the people in it. 

this year, i decided to take 24 kids christmas-related books and create an advent calendar to remember. any time i can use to create special memories with the two little men in my life, i will take it! with this advent calendar, i anticipate lots of cuddling on the couch with the littles reading the christmas classics daily. sounds heavenly to me! 

join me in starting this tradition for your family as well!

all you need is:

•24 christmas/winter kids books (i took some classics that i had as a child and also included some i found at target with my kiddos favorite childhood characters (think dora, big bird and even mater). 

•wrapping paper (i used brown, kraft paper)

•tape

•glue stick

•large circle hole punch (you can find one at your local craft store)

•vinyl number stickers (you can find them in the scrapbook section of your local craft store).


directions:

•simply, wrap each book up. 

•then, cut a circle (using the hold punch) of another color of paper. 

•using the glue stick, attach each circle to the wrapped package.

•once dry, attached numbered, vinyl stickers to each book from 1-24.

that is it! 


this would be a fun tradition this would be to start with your own children or grandchildren, don't you think?

enjoy!

school lunch: tips and tricks for packing the perfect lunch box

it's back to school time and for parents everywhere that means the return of the dreaded school lunch. packing school lunches, although a seemingly easy task, can become overwhelming whether you have one kiddo or five when you are in the mad school morning rush. 

both nellie and myself have found that organization is the key as well as involving the kids in packing their own lunch.

in the pantry, we both keep items for lunches organized and accessible in bins.

yogurt tubes are a stable in both of our houses. nellie keeps them in the fridge while i choose to keep them frozen to use as an ice pack to keep lunches cool until ready to eat. what works best for you?

if you have all of the items for lunches already prepared and ready to go, then all that has to be made is a sandwich or perhaps to pack up leftovers in a small container.

nellie also keeps the school lunch calendar visible on a clipboard so, the night before school her kids can choose if they will be buying a lunch or packing one. 

if you have a place for lunch boxes to go, it makes life so much easier. the kids know that, when they get home from school, they need to clean out their lunch box and return it to the bin, ready to be re-packed that evening for the following day.

i love to use these awesome labels from mabel's labels to clearly label lunch boxes and water bottles. you can order them online, or i found mine at my local target store.

you can also make homemade granola bars from our recipe here: 

homemade granola bars

while looking at some of my favorite blogs and pinterest, i found some other great ideas to help make school lunches fun and interesting. 

i just love this organization from delightful order. if i had an extra fridge in the garage i would be all over this! 

katie at simple bites has some great solutions for picky eaters including awesome smoothie recipes and homemade fruit roll-ups!

love from the oven has some super cute, simple ways to add a little fun into the lunch box.

these stickers from just bento are amazing! 

how does she has some wonderful ideas from cute clips to jokes and other creative goodness.

"donut" sandwiches from super healthy kids 

banana magic trick for perfectly hidden sliced bananas from zakka life--so fun!

apple puzzle from at home with real food

diy lunchbox icepacks from my kitchen escapades

what are *your* favorite lunchbox tips and tricks? please share and help a fellow mama out! 

friday fun finds: sensational sangria recipes

summer + sangria = one sensational summer. enjoy!

sangria from the pioneer woman

melon mint sangria from caleigh's kitchen

summer fruit sangria from boulder locavore

thai basil sangria from food & wine

sangria bianca from refinery 29

white sangria from eat drink pretty

summer fruit sangria from everything fab

strawberry and peach sangria from epicurious

mexican sangria from design sponge 

sparkling white wine sangria from sweet paul

a birthday without a glue stick--guest post by melissa @ momcomm

my kids have the same birthday, three years apart. 


yep, that's right. they are roughly three years and four hours apart. and no, it wasn't planned.

i've always had a crafty side - scrapbooking, graphic design, heck I even made soap for a time - but with two kids, running my consulting business, keeping up with two blogs and just life in general, my craftiness somehow got stored on the shelf for a while.

but then birthdays roll around. and I get that itch to CREATE something. i want my kids to have a birthday from "pages" of pinterest in all its crafty goodness.

i've done it before. last year, i went all out throwing both of my kids a party in the same day. one for little roo turning one and then more people came and we continued the celebration for big roo turning four. um, that was nuts.

this year? i just didn't have it in me to get all crafty. but yet that mama guilt creeped in like mama guilt does and i worried when their birthday rolled around, they'd be disappointed. 


it's not like i didn't have anything planned. we had balloons and a gift each to greet them in the morning. we made rice krispy treats for their classes at school. we ate at mcdonalds for lunch (which we never do!). we went to chuck e cheese for dinner (another thing we never do!). and we even had a little cake for them at home after dinner. 


a totally exhausting day without one picture-perfect craft in sight. 


little roo was so exhausted he fell asleep right on my chest (that's after the nap in his crib, by the way). snuggling with my baby boy on his special day. and it hit me. 


why should I feel guilty that I didn't break out glue, paper and ribbon to make some snazzy decor or spend all day slaving over a creatively cute meal? after all, they don't care that their meal didn't come from my pinterest food board or that I didn't stay up all night making something for them. i treated them like birthday boys in the simplest way possible: i showed them they were loved. 


and there wasn't a glue stick in sight. 

melissa culbertson is a mom, marketing communications consultant, blogger, author of the diy blog critique and creator of the upcoming content brew, an online blogging course about content planning and idea creation. you can find her on twitter and at hanging out at her blogs momcomm and adventuroo.

diy -- wall magnetic tray for toddlers

while i love the look of stainless steel, i was disappointed when we had children that we would miss out on all the cool, educational magnetic toys that are available. then along came pinterest (if you haven't discovered it yet, you must. it is so amazingly addicting. but i digress...perhaps we devote a whole post to pinterest?) 

i found a link to a blog where this *brilliant* woman had the idea to use an oil pan (yes. from an automotive store) mounted on the wall as a magnetic surface. 

i promptly went out and purchased two fabulous fridge leap frog items and it has provided my kiddos with countless hours of entertainment. 

if you are looking for an inexpensive way to entertain the kiddos during the holiday break or another inexpensive christmas gift, this is it!

note: you will need to clean the oil pan quite a bit before mounting it to the wall (it has quite a greasy film on it), but I just used some clorox spray and it came off rather quickly. also, we used wood screws to mount the pan directly into the fabulous painted wood paneling in the play room, but the blogger that originally came up with idea used velcro.